How much would it cost, roughly, to manufacture helium from one of these?
From what I understand, we are running out of our natural stock.
From what I understand, we are running out of our natural stock.
Each fusion event makes one He atom and releases about 17 MeV of fusion energy. Since (one mole) X (one eV) = ~100,000 Joules, fusing one mole (2 grams) of He would produce about 1.7 X 10^12 Joules. That's about 472 megawatt-hours of fusion energy produced.
Another commenter says that the energy INput (to the Farnsworth fusor) is about 100,000 times the energy OUTput; so fusing that 2 grams of He would require a 2,000 megawatt power plant to run for 23,600 hours, or 2.7 years.
Readers: please correct any mistakes you find.
Or, from a different angle, that energy density is why fusion is the holy grail of energy.
Not that it makes a big difference - producing helium with a fusor remains extremely impractical.
I believe deuterium fusion events mostly produce He4, occasionally He3 + neutron. So we'd actually produce between 3 and 4 grams.